Heart of Steel: Steel Hawk, Book 2

by Eve Devon

  Refusing to succumb to her soothing, he said, “You can tell me where Edward is.”

  “I wish I knew. When the power went out, he grabbed my hand and helped me out into the courtyard where everyone seemed to be congregating. Then he told me to wait there in the safety of the crowd—he was going to go look for you and check everything was okay. When he didn’t come back, I decided I was going to look myself. You haven’t seen him at all?”

  Adam searched her face. Was she telling the truth? Maybe the person who’d knocked him down had been Edward? He’d been standing with Honeysuckle earlier that evening. Her scent might have rubbed off on him. A man Edward Long’s size would have knocked him to the floor much more easily than Honeysuckle could have.

  “The last time I saw Edward, he was making his way through the crowded ballroom to get to you,” Adam told her.

  “Shall I go and check his room and see if he’s made it back there?”

  “How do you know which room he was given?”

  Honeysuckle hit her forehead with her hand. “I don’t. I guess I wasn’t thinking. Look, he must be in the castle somewhere. If I can’t be of any help to you here, I’m happy to go and look for him.”

  There was a pinging sound, and a light came on. Honeysuckle rushed to the window. “Power’s back up. The castle’s lighting up like a Christmas tree.”

  Adam reached for his laptop and plugged it into a power supply. Honeysuckle’s words reminded him of when he’d caught her snooping in his house and he’d told her if she’d made it over the threshold of his study, the place would light up like one.

  He winced, hating that he’d automatically gone back to using the word “snooping”.

  “Are you sure you shouldn’t be resting? If you tell me what to look for on your computer, I can watch that while you take a rest.” She turned from the window, and he could feel her eyes on him. “You look so tired,” she commented.

  “Whereas you don’t look any different, at all,” he mused. But then didn’t he already have firsthand knowledge that beautiful liars never looked treacherous. That was the whole point.

  Shaking his head to clear it, he brought the laptop closer and prepared to work.

  “You wouldn’t be able to run the analysis that I need to.” And there was no way he was giving her access to his laptop while he slept. “But stay,” he commanded. Maybe if he saw her on-screen taking the Pasha Star, he wouldn’t be able to talk himself out of handing her in.

  * * * * *

  Honeysuckle could feel the guilt emanating from Adam in large powerful waves. Her heart went out to him. She knew he must be feeling like he’d failed in his job to provide the best security case on the market. She didn’t understand how this could have possibly happened, but she knew it couldn’t have been through anything Adam had or hadn’t done.

  She also knew he wasn’t in the right headspace to be able to hear that right now.

  “I’ll get you some painkillers, to help you work.”

  She wasn’t even sure he’d heard her as she disappeared into the bathroom.

  When she came back out with two tablets and a glass of water, Adam was pacing up and down, swearing to himself.

  “You’ve found something already?”

  Adam barked out a laugh. “Fucker hacked my signal and made a prerecorded loop of each angle. And I didn’t even realize that’s what happened. I can’t believe I was so stupid. I’ve been sitting here thinking that I must have left out a variable when designing those glasses.”

  “The ones you were wearing earlier tonight were to do with Descry?”

  “I designed them to show me camera angles from the case in real time.” He stopped pacing and blew out a breath. “I thought that being outside in such low temperatures may have caused the feed to somehow stick. But it wasn’t anything to do with where I viewed the feed from.”

  “Here, take these.”

  “You’d have to be good to hack like that and not leave a trace,” he said, ignoring her outstretched hand. “Would you even know how to get past a triple encryption code?”

  He was looking at her in such a way that she momentarily thought he was asking her specifically, not figuratively.

  Flustered, she put down the glass of water and wandered over to stare at his laptop. It bleeped, and she jumped as the screen changed.

  Adam stepped over and sat in front of the computer.

  Honeysuckle tipped her head to the side to try to make sense of what she was seeing on-screen. “What is that?” She frowned. It was as if a remote-controlled chopper was hovering over the security case and the Pasha Star.

  “This is it. This is what Descry was seeing while I was being shown looped feed.” Adam entered a long set of keystrokes, and the images on-screen got bigger and sharper.

  “Jesus. The thief flew her out of the room, right under our noses.”

  Adam brought up a different screen that Honeysuckle recognized as some sort of diagnostics program. “The guards must have been murdered even earlier than this,” he muttered.

  Horrified, Honeysuckle grabbed hold of his shoulder. “Whoever did this killed to get it?”

  Adam swung around in his chair to stare at her, and as she looked down at him, she wasn’t sure she liked what she was seeing. Why did she suddenly feel like a pinned butterfly?

  His diagnostics screen timed out, and the screen went into black and white.

  Adam must have seen the change out of the corner of his eyes, because he swung back to gaze at the screen. “This must have been when the power was cut. This is what Descry was seeing and recording via her UPS.”

  Two figures walked into the room.

  “It’s a shame you don’t have sound on this,” Honeysuckle murmured, thinking straight away that the couple looked a little high on something, a little too loose with the way they moved along the room.

  “For exhibitions—anywhere where she’s got more than one or two people—it would be too difficult to isolate all the different sounds.”

  Honeysuckle gasped.

  How could she and Edward… She swallowed and gasped again.

  Adam wrenched out of his chair and swore viciously.

  Honeysuckle couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  She stared mute, her eyes getting more and more round.

  Then, as the two figures started seriously making out—as the woman lowered to her knees in front of the man, Honeysuckle started shaking her head from side to side.

  “I don’t understand…?” She turned to Adam, expecting to see the same disbelieving, stunned expression on his face, because how was it possible—conceivable, even—that Edward Long and she could be in the throne room having sex while the Pasha Star was being stolen.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Adam was fishing for his cell phone, his movements jerky.

  His expression thunderous.

  “What are you doing?” Honeysuckle asked, mouth dry.

  “Calling Anton to come get you.”

  Oh my God. He thought she…

  “Adam, stop it. Stop it,” she repeated, trying to yank the phone out of his grip. “You know I couldn’t have done this.”

  “Do I?”

  She stared at him. “That’s not me. I don’t know what’s going on, but that’s not me in that room with Edward.”

  “Of course it’s you. Look.” He grabbed her wrist in a viselike grip and yanked her over to look at the hideous images on the screen. “Look,” he ground out, his other hand on the back of her head to force her to face the screen. “Go on, then, lie. Lie to my face,” he growled against her ear. “Explain to me that you are not on your knees before Edward Long. That is not you in this dress. Not him in his tux, with his shirt hanging off and his pants round his ankles. Lie like I know you can. Like I know you have.” When the first tear slipped down her cheek, he let g
o of her as if he was disgusted by the very air she breathed. “We’re both standing here watching it.”

  She dashed away the tears. “You’re saying Edward and I stole the Pasha Star and then, for fun, had sex in the room, and now I’m here talking to you—just like that? Think about what you’re saying. I’m a Hawk.”

  “So was Nathaniel Hawk. Or are you forgetting that we’ve already proved he was a thief as a teenager. Edward was the one who told us. Nice touch that.”

  “But you know me,” she said, trying desperately to keep the begging note out of her voice.

  “Do I?”

  “We made love, and now you don’t know me?”

  He pointed to the screen. “People have sex all the time. It doesn’t mean they know each other.”

  “But what on earth could I possibly have to gain by doing this?”

  “Who knows? Maybe you like the thrill?”

  “I get my thrills working with jewels. I don’t need to steal them to do that.”

  “I meant the thrill of being caught. The thrill of acting one way and being another. You like that, don’t you, Honeysuckle? The confident and coy dancer who seduces by removing her clothes. The professional and efficient personal assistant who seduces by making herself indispensable—by adhering to my rules and keeping just enough of herself to herself to make her appealing to me. The shy but extremely talented jewelry designer who covets gemstones and carries around a jeweler’s loupe.”

  Honeysuckle felt as if he’d walked up to her, forced her mouth open, shoved a grenade down her throat, and were waiting to pull the pin.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  Couldn’t think.

  Couldn’t defend.

  And then came the anger burning white-hot.

  “How can someone who is such a genius be so bloody dense? People can be multifaceted and that doesn’t make them duplicitous.” But in his eyes, she could see he didn’t believe her. Didn’t hold with that theory. Because it was messy and human and meant she wasn’t perfect.

  “Do you think I slept with you for some sort of ulterior motive?” she whispered.

  He didn’t answer her, but she watched the choppy rise and fall of his chest.

  “You do,” she answered for him. “If you had such a low opinion of me, why the hell did you sleep with me?”

  “I made a mistake,” he bit out, his whole body rigid.

  “A mistake. Wow. Because you thought I was someone I wasn’t? And now, watching that crap, you ‘know’ I couldn’t possibly be the person you thought I was?”

  He looked exhausted. As if his brain really couldn’t compute how she could be. And she realized it was because his brain wasn’t connected to his heart. His heart wasn’t involved at all. Would never be involved.

  She had to keep trying, though. Couldn’t leave them like this. Couldn’t let him get away with believing all that of her.

  “Adam, please, for once trust what you know in your heart. This is some sort of a trick to hurt Steel Hawk. Hurt Zarrenburg. Someone is seeking to divide and conquer, and you’re letting them.”

  “I do trust.”

  “Trust me. Not what you see on that screen. Look at what I saw at Lou’s and how that wasn’t the truth. You even lectured me about it. Trust what is in your heart.”

  For a moment, his expression softened, and she thought she’d gotten through.

  But then he said, “I trust logic,” killing her hope dead. “My heart isn’t telling me anything. Logic is telling me you lied about your dancing, your jewelry, and you haven’t once, ever, given me a reason I believe for your wanting to leave Steel Hawk. For all I know, this could have been organized by you all along.”

  God, if he ever found out the real reason was because of her feelings for him…

  “Go to hell,” she choked out before turning and walking to the suite door. “I will prove to you one way or another that that is not me on that screen, and then I’m gone from Steel Hawk.”

  “On your way to the next thing?” he asked, his voice bitter.

  “On my way to someone better. You know, I used to think naively that someone had hurt you so badly you’d enshrined your heart in steel to protect yourself. Boy, was I wrong. You don’t have a heart. You have a void.”

  * * * * *

  Honeysuckle sat at a large table in the records vault, trying in vain to concentrate. She hadn’t slept at all. When she’d left the suite last night, she’d gone in search of Edward, thinking foolishly that he would be able to convince Adam she hadn’t betrayed him.

  When she hadn’t been able to find him, she’d grown worried. And yes, a little doubt had started to creep in. Could Edward somehow be involved?

  But why? Why would he want to steal the Pasha Star? If he wanted to hurt Steel Hawk and use his job as an alibi or as a cover, he could do that financially, or tie them up in a legal battle that could last years, much more easily than going to all the trouble of stealing a diamond. And what could he possibly gain by hurting Zarrenburg?

  She yawned and tried again to concentrate, but within seconds, she was off in her head again. Feeling all the anger. All the hurt.

  She might have made some mistakes in her life—might have shied away from finishing things. Might have run away from herself. But in trying all those jobs, she’d gotten to walk in the shoes of enough people to understand them.

  Adam obviously hadn’t.

  He’d surrounded himself with a select group of people. Steel Hawk was a family unit. It protected its own, and it had shielded him from having to deal with his trust issues. How he could believe Edward Long or she was involved with the Pasha Star going missing, or even involved period, defied her own reasoning and logic.

  Sighing, she pulled the book toward her and tried to commit a couple of sentences to memory. If she wanted to prove to him she wasn’t capable of hurting Steel Hawk like he was suggesting, she had to try to work out who was behind all this.

  “Excuse me,” Honeysuckle called over the records librarian. “Do you have translations for all your newspaper articles?”

  “Mostly. Can I help you narrow down your search?”

  “I guess I’m looking for anything you have about when the Zarrenburg flag changed. Oh, and this will probably sound a little strange, but is there a particular tree that’s associated with Zarrenburg?” If she could find out what, specifically, the symbols on her key related to, that might help.

  “A tree?” the librarian queried. “No. I don’t believe so, at any rate. I’ll run a search for you.”

  Honeysuckle smiled her thanks and went back to reading the English translation of a Hungarian article about Prince Randolph’s state funeral in 1851. She looked at the photographs of the flag on top of his coffin. The portcullis was central.

  She clutched her key, still hanging around her neck from the special chain she’d designed, and rubbed her thumb back and forth, wishing she could somehow absorb all its secrets.

  The tiny roll of parchment inside had to be some sort of cipher.

  Needing to feel she was doing something other than reading, she pulled out her phone and messaged the Steel Hawk company librarian, asking if she could find the Steel Hawk keys in any of the early catalogs and asking if she knew of the date they had been made.

  San Francisco was seven hours behind, so she wasn’t sure she’d receive an answer today.

  Still. It was something.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Hawk, I don’t have any results showing for a national tree, or a tree only found in Zarrenburg.”

  Honeysuckle’s heart sank. “Okay. Thank you for checking anyway.”

  “Do you perhaps have a photograph of this tree? I would be happy to scan it in and see if it matches anything in the archives.”

  “I’m not sure how well it would come out, but it’s worth a shot.” Whipping off her Steel Hawk
key, she stood and followed the woman over to her desk with computer and printer. After lifting the lid of the printer, she laid the key and chain gently down, positioning the tree and portcullis so that they would scan best.

  She stared at the computer screen as the image popped up.

  “It is a shame the image is not sharper, but I will try,” said the librarian, looking happily determined, as if she, like Honeysuckle, sensed a trail she had to hunt down.

  Honeysuckle smiled and removed her key from the top of the scanner. As she clipped it back around her neck, she had a brain wave. “Can you start the search while I see if I can get you a sharper image?”

  “Of course.”

  Honeysuckle grabbed up her purse and cell phone and ran all the way back to her suite. She was going to have to wake Sophie up.

  If the tree on her key was clearer, it might help.

  Bringing up her sister’s number on her cell, she tapped the screen and waited.

  Come on, pick up, pick up, pick— “Sophie? Thank God.”

  “Honeysuckle? Do you have any idea what time it is?” Then, obviously registering that it was her sister calling her in the middle of the night, she said, “Are you okay? What do you need? Is it Man of Steel? Has something finally happened with him?”

  Honeysuckle flumped down onto one of the chairs by the fire and took a deep breath. “Darned right something happened with Man of Steel—what happened is I’ve wised up to myself and, rest assured, will never, ever and I mean ever, go there again with him.” As she said the words, her heart filled up with tears, and she wished mightily for even a tenth of Adam’s skill at not caring.

  “Holy cow,” her sister said in shock, “you have had the sex with Man of Steel.”

  “Oh, it gets better.”

  “How can it get better? Wait—I need to sit up for this.”

  “Less than twenty-four hours after the sex, which I thought was, you know, more than…” She pressed her fingers to the top of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut because despite it being good to vent, she didn’t need to be telling Sophie about “more” and “feelings” and… “Anyway, less than twenty-four hours after, he’s accusing me of sleeping with our company lawyer.”